A film by Doris Dörrie
Tonight the German director Doris Dörrie had come to Zürich to introduce her film to the Swiss public.
Doris Dörrie who writes and directs her own film scripts has a long history of writing and exposing the women condition.
This beautiful film takes place in Japan after the Fukushima disaster a young German woman comes to help out ,she volunteers as a clown to help both the people and herself at the same time as she recovers from a broken heart,abandoned by her fiance she meets the oldest geisha who has her own suffering ;the guilt of ghosts chasing her after the disaster.
The alliance between Japan and Germany goes back to the fascist years of WW2 and yet the mention of the connection is now clean of the disasterous history ,a young German woman and an old Japanese find eachother,the Japanese teaches the young woman about tea ceremony and about the need to let go of the past.
The young German woman sees ghosts,the elderly Japanese woman scolds her:
“Your sadness attracts them .”
The two women save eachother.
After the film Doris Dörrie had answered questions,confident,clear and humble she had thanked the audience telling us that without the audience,the artistic process is not possible.
I went up to her and thanked her for creating such interesting films about relationships and women ‘s perspective so that i was motivated to watch her films in German without subtitle feeling the universal message of her films that spoke to me despite the cultural and linguistic barrier.

I told her how important her films were for women,for exploring various themes always with poetic beauty and humor,Dörrie’s films stand out as representing communicative world friendly European films that have survived the English language monopoly and added a particular flavor of a culture unique and universal at the same time.
The film is in black and white honoring old Japanese films and as Doris Dörrie had explained,emphasising facial expressions and contrasts.

An evening heavy with thoughts about atomic energy,disasters and the price we pay for our mistakes.